Thanks to all who commented and are looking forward to this story! Special thanks to the three guest comments! I so appreciate your enthusiasm and support!

There's quite a lot of exposition in the first chapters, so I hope you bear with me until we get to some good stuff!

"What, your worship?"

He watched her face as she put up her shields to block the venom that poured forth from his comment with practiced ease, her arms crossed her chest.

"I came here to make sure you were okay, flyboy." As an afterthought she added, "And don't call me that!"

Each word that reached his ears seemed to make his head feel worse. He felt his eyes close again as his head sank backwards on what felt like a pillow. Why was he laying on a pillow? "Well, I'm glad to know you care, your Highness. Maybe my selfless sacrifice in the cold wasn't for nothin'."

Luke, where was Luke? He found the poor kid lying in the snow, he remembered that part. But why was the Princess's voice the one waking him up? And why wasn't he wearing his snow suit?

"What happened to Luke?" She asked as he felt another shake to his body.

He tried to laugh but it only came out as a grimace as more pain shot to his head. "Worried about ME, Princess?"

She didn't react. "Where's Luke?"

Han slowly realized he was in no mood or position to fight with her. Normally, he reveled in the opportunity to see her fire ignite within her. In fact, he made it a point to rile her up whenever possible. But his pounding head suggested he was not at peek performance to appreciate her spirit.

So he reached back in his memory and responded. "Found him in the snow. He was a little beaten up but still alive." He managed to open his eyes to look at her again. "Kept him warm by slipping him in a tauntaun's stomach. Don't recommend that unless absolutely necessary."

"Did he come back with you?"

Han stretched his memory, but found it blank. "Weird... don't remember that part. I'm sure he did. He was right there with me."

Han's eyes tried to take in the blurry image surrounding the Princess. He recognized some of the instruments that suggested he was in the med bay. How did he get here? He must have sustained some injuries to be feeling this shitty.

"What's the last thing you remember?" He heard her ask in her signature all business voice.

Han just realized he was still laying down on the med bed. He made to right that by slowly and cautiously pulling his body into a sitting position and shuffling his legs to rest off the edge of the bed. He wiggled his toes as they rested on the floor. Where were his shoes?

"I built us a shelter with a fire," he began to explain as he shut his eyes again and rested his head in his hands. "The kid looked like he was warming up. I was only gonna shut my eyes for a minute… but I think I fell asleep." Now he tilted his head from his grasp and managed to peek out one of his eyes to look at her. "And the next thing I remember is waking to your beautiful face."

She swallowed and narrowed her eyes, clearly not concentrating on his last flirtatious line, but on the content before that.

Han's eyes opened further as he took stock of her, his vision finally coming in sharper. "What happened to you?" He reached up to brush his fingers over the patch still covering her forehead.

She ducked away and his hand hung in the air. "I don't know," she admitted. "I can't remember. I thought I was fast asleep in my icy quarters and then I woke up here."

He clicked his tongue cheekily. "Sleep walking?"

She rolled her head in a circle, her eyes squinting as she failed to keep her expression painless. "No!" She continued, her voice deadly serious. "I'm not sure what's happening here, Han. I woke up in a room just down the hall."

Hesitant, nervous, skeptical. All words he would never have associated with the fearless Princess he met on the Death Star three years ago. Yet those were the best descriptors of what he heard from her voice and expression.

"Which room am I in?" He asked casually, trying to get his bearings so he could adequately work to quell her uncertainty.

Instead of an answer, he got a riddle. "Do you recognize it?" She asked, her hand sweeping across the space.

He looked around again, nothing looked familiar. The icy walls he remembered were now white panels. The curved ceilings were crisply cornered. And he wasn't nearly as cold as he should be. "No," he grumbled, wondering if this was the med bay in one of their larger freighters. "And I thought I delivered enough supplies all over the base to recognize every inch."

He watched the Princess nod her head, taking in that piece of information.

She looked… different. Certainly not her confident, commending self, but it was more than that. Her clothes… where was the white snowsuit and her crown of braids? What she had on was… beautiful. It was beautiful, minus the tears in the fabric and the bloody patches. Was that his blood? Gods, she had never worn anything so elaborate and with such delicate fabric that hung from her body like flowing, breathing water. She looked… she was… He couldn't finish that mental sentence for fear of loosing something he was trying hard to preserve; his heart from being stolen and then broken.

He finally looked back to his own person. He was now wearing a shirt and vest. "Hey, who put me in these clothes?" Han took another look at the right sleeve as he twisted his arm. "And why is there blood on it?"

Maybe he got knocked out during the night, the cold too much for his body to take. A crew must have found him the next morning and jostled him around a little. That was the most logical explanation, right?

Han caught the growing worry laced in her face. Was she really this worried about him, about Luke? He tried to give her a reassuring glance as he hid the sleeve with the blood.

"Hey," he gave her a sideways grin. "I'm sure Luke is right around here."

She tilted her head like she didn't believe him.

He gave her a nod of reassurance as he started roaming his eyes throughout the space. "Let me get my shoes on and we'll go see him." He kept looking until he realized his boots were nowhere in sight. "Where's my shoes?"

During his scan, his eyes made it to her feet."Where are your shoes? Your feet must be freezing…"

She looked down at her bare feet. Apparently her feet were not freezing. "Han…"

He looked up to her again, his face squinting with his question. "Why is it so hot in here?"

She didn't answer, just stared back at him with a blank face, eyes widening and lips parted.

Han tore his eyes away as he noticed a curtained window along the side wall. Managing to stand steadily on his two bare feet, he took one step and then another. As soon as he could reach it, his hard drew the curtain open.

The scene was staggering. No ice, no snow, very little blue sky visible. Instead, there were spacescrapers everywhere, speeders everywhere, people walking the streets below. Since he could look down, he assumed they were in one of those colossal buildings. Gods, when had he last seen a spacescraper, let alone been in one. There was an even taller building across the way and as far as his eyes could see, the rooftops dancing across the skyline.

And people, there were hundreds of people out and about. They looked like bugs on the panel below, moving this way and that. Airspeeders whizzed by right in front of him. He adjusted his eyes as the next one came past, focusing on the couple for the split second they were in his vision, so casually driving by.

"Princess…" his breath was shallow as he continued to stare at the foreign sights. "Where are we?"

No response… He flipped his head to see her jaw slack, fixated at the sight out the window.

"This isn't Hoth." He pointed out the window, his voice raising in intensity.

She was silent.

Han raced through his memory. "Are we on a mission somewhere?"

"I don't think so," she said hesitant to even feel certain on that. "I don't remember."

He looked back to the window as another airspeeder drove by, the sound of it approaching and then disappearing struck him almost as much as the shocking vista.

"Okay," he heard the pragmatic voice of the Princess behind him. "The last thing you remember was that night on Hoth when you went out to find Luke."

"Yeah!" He spun around with his arms swinging. "That's where I was."

Leia countered his growing hysteria with her placidity. "That's the last thing I remember before falling asleep and waking up here."

His hands went to his hips. He watched her, searching for the answer. She always seemed to know what what going on. She was in charge, and in this case, he was very happy she was. She must know what was going on.

"There's only one other explanation I can think of…"

He watched the wariness with which she spoke as she sat on the edge of the bed.

"And it's not good…"

"What?" He asked with bated breath.

"The Empire…" she began, her hands moving about the air in front of her as if they were grasping for anything that would make this make sense. "Somehow we were captured and… I don't know… they took us here."

The hiss of the door had both of them jump out of their skin and Han reach for the invisible blaster at his side. Leia shot to her feet and turned her body towards the invading presence.

The droid clunked its metal feet against the glossy floor as it entered carrying a box. Han scanned him carefully. It didn't automatically look like any Imperial droid he had ever met. But what was the other explanation? He swallowed as he contemplated this as a real possibility and expected the worst.

The droid stopped its pace and spoke. "Senator Organa and Han Solo are both showing improvements in their health conditions." The eyes lit up as they completed their scan

"Where's General Rieekan?" His eyes averted to the Princess as her words came out aggressive, probably still thinking this could be an Imperial droid.

"I do not have that name in my system. That person is not under my care."

"Where are we?" Her voice turned ice cold as she continued her interrogation.

"The medical center on Chandrila."

"Chandrila!" Han sputtered with indignation. That name meant one thing to him right now, Imperial occupation.

"Mon Mothma's home planet?" Leia questioned under her breath as her panic dialed up to an 11.

That name obviously meant something to the droid because he tilted his head to look at Leia. "Yes. Chancellor Mothma has been called and is aware of your condition. She wishes you a quick recovery."

Chancellor?

Han looked at Leia to see his own level of confusion reflected in her eyes.

The droid was not aware of their stupor and kept going. "I bring the personal items that were found with Senator Organa and Han Solo." It held up the box it was carrying before setting it down at the end if the bed. The droid didn't wait for any additional input from them before turning around and exiting through the sliding door.

Both Leia and Han immediately stepped up to the box and glanced inside.

He watched as her hand went for the device with a single crack down the front of the screen.

"A comm?"

He had no doubt that was what it was, but what was it doing here among their possessions. "When was the last time you carried one of them?" He asked.

She shook her head, still staring in awe of the foreign device. "Before officially joining the alliance that's for sure."

"There's another one." He pulled another device out of the box. "Only this one is completely busted." That was certainly evident by the fact that it was basically already sliced into two pieces.

She dug in again and pulled out a small item she found in the corner of the box. He watched her palm the piece of jewelry, a ring. A ring with a gold band and two brilliant sapphire jewels. It looked quite expensive to his trained eye. He'd spent some time smuggling precious stones to take an educated guess at the value.

"Jewelry?" She fingered the piece before holding it out to him. "This isn't mine."

He backed away with his palms out. "Well, It's not mine!"

She pulled the item back towards her as she turned it over in her fingers. "It's a ring…"

"Not mine!" He reiterated forcefully as he leaned back into the box. He got excited when he saw a familiar friend, and then disappointed as he held up a weapon that had seen better days. "This busted blaster probably was mine, thought."

Two pairs of shoes were the last items they pulled out. His were easy to identify, a pair of brown boots that looked well worn, though the style and color were as unrecognizable as his clothes. The other pair were less functional, covered in blue silk and merely slip-ons by design. He didn't remember Leia ever wearing anything that purely decorative. She looked hesitant too as she took the shoes.

And that was it. The empty box felt like a symbol of how he was feeling. So little understanding of their current situation and the sparse clues that were not at all helpful.

"Oh shit." He rand a hand through his messy locks as a new thought crossed through his mind. "Jabba…"

"What?" Leia looked up at him. He just noticed that her eyes had been scrolling through the cracked comm, her fingers working to scan through files.

"I told you yesterday," Han shrugged as he reminded her what he decided he needed to do. "I've gotta get back to Tatooine to pay Jabba." He suddenly felt better, secure in the notion that he had a plan, a next step from this odd dream he was in. Even facing Jabba seemed like a safer bet than internalizing what the heck was happening here.

Leia obviously felt differently about his contemplations. She shook her head incredulously and he knew her sharp tongue was soon to follow. "How can you think about that at a time like this?" Her head dug furiously back into the comm.

"A time like what?" He pushed back, trying to keep her attention. She was ignoring him as she furiously, desperately searched for answers. Her lack of control only fueled the panic within him. "What the hell is going on?"

She froze, eyes squinting and then widening at the screen. "Han…"

He waited a second for her to continue. When she didn't he asked "What?" He wasn't sure if he wanted to hear what had her so disturbed.

She raised her eyes. "There's a missed communication from Mon Mothma."